Visors for blocking the sun and other sources of glare have been standard equipment on motor vehicles for many years. Generally, a visor is mounted to the headliner above the windshield in front of both the driver and the front seat passenger. Traditionally, the visor has included a support pin to latch the visor to a retaining clip of the headliner. When the support pin is unlatched from the retaining clip, the occupant may pivot the visor to a position away from the front windshield.
Sun visors for vehicles have been manufactured of a plastic, shell-type core or frame covered with material that is colored to match the interior upholstery of the vehicle. Some early visor designs included an assembly process wherein the edge of the material covering the visor was trimmed using a trim bead. Particular designs stitched the trim bead directly into the plastic material cover of the frame. However, this stitching is both expensive and difficult. Furthermore, these trim bead or stitch designs are unattractive to some users. Thus, some newer designs have eliminated the trim bead and have provided a new and clean appearance on the visor edges while still effectively retaining the material covering on the visor shell.
Newer visor designs require that the material utilized as a covering for the visor be pre-tucked or adhered inside the body of the visor before the two visor halves are attached or bonded together because the material covering tends to pull out or loosen during or after shell closure. The material covering adhesion process requires that a bonding cement or glue be used to attach the material covering to the inside of a shell half prior to construction of the visor as a separate operation.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,056,852 discloses a visor with a mounting post or support pin having a tucking flange operatively connected to a visor frame. For this particular assembly, the visor halves are provided with edges that are adapted to form clamping flanges to secure the material covering in an aesthetically pleasing fashion about the support pin. As is conventional, distal ends of the visor mate to pinch edges of the cover between the visor halves. For this design, the support pin includes a tucking flange used to push the material covering into a juxtaposed set of notches contained along a common edge or fold of the visor halves before the visor halves are brought together to form the shell-type visor body. Thus, the pin is present in the notches at the time the visor halves are initially closed and remains in the aperture formed by the juxtaposed notches until the visor body is fully formed. After closing of the visor halves, the support pin is trapped by the edges defining clamping flanges, which thereby retain the material fabric within the visor body. Thus, this relatively complicated process requires that the material covering be held in place at the distal ends of the visor halves, while at the same time the support pin, with its tucking flange, is held within the juxtaposed notches along the fold axes of the visor halves so that the cover is in position for retainment by the clamping flanges.